Printing in Paper Industry – A complete analysis of Printing on Paper

April 28, 2023
Posted by: Aryan Deo (Aarpee Decor)
Category: Blog

Printing in Paper Industry

A complete analysis of Printing on Paper

By Aryan Deo, Aarpee Décor

Printing is a process for production of texts and images, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing. The art and science of making a large number of duplicate reproductions of an original copy is termed as printing. It may be defined as the art of preserving all other arts. Printing is the medium for printed communication.

HISTORY OF PRINTING

Four Important Periods in the History of the Book

I. 7th to 13th Century:

The age of religious “manuscript” book production. Books in this period are entirely constructed by hand, and are largely religious texts whose creation is meant as an act of worship.

II. 13th to 15th Century:

The secularization of book production. Books are beginning to be produced that do not serve as objects of worship, but that try to explain something about the observable world. The difficulty with the spread of such knowledge is that production is still taking place via preprint – manuscript – methods.

III. .15th to 16th Century: The first printed books. These are print versions of traditional works like the Bible, books of hours, prayer books and the religious calendars.

IV. 6th to 17th Century: New information is put into books that have important consequences for European life and society.

Block Printing in China

Printing is one of the four great inventions of Ancient China. This technology made an extreme contribution to books and records production. It speeds up the documentation of human history. However, many of the records had been worn out under dictatorship, wars and disasters.

In China the technique of printing with carved wood blocks appeared about the 7th century, early in the Tang dynasty. Block printing reached its golden age during the Song dynasty, 960 – 1279 AD, as the Emperors encouraged the publication of large numbers of books by the central and local governments.

In a memorial to the throne in 1023, Northern Song Dynasty China, it recorded that the central government at that time used copperplate to print the paper money and also the copper-block to print the numbers and characters on the money, nowadays we can find these shadows from the Song paper money. Later in the Jin Dynasty, people used the same but more developed technique to print paper money and formal official documents; the typical example of this kind of movable copper block printing is a printed “check” of Jin Dynasty in the year of 1215.

Block printing came to Christian Europe as a method for printing on cloth, where it was common by 1300. Images were printed on cloth for religious purposes.

In Europe, Johann Gutenberg, of the German city of Mainz, developed European printing technology in 1440, with which the classical age of printing began.

East Asian style movable type printing, which was based on laborious manual rubbing and which had been scarcely used, practically died out after the introduction of European style printing in the 19th century. Gutenberg is also credited with the introduction of an oil-based ink which was more durable than previously used water-based inks.

The Gutenberg Bible was the first book printed.

Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press revolutionized communication and book production leading to the spread of knowledge.

A printing press was built in Venice in 1469, and by 1500 the city had 417 printers.

In 1470 Johann Heynlin set up a printing press in Paris. Stephen Day was the first to build a printing press in North America at Massachusetts Bay in 1628, and helped establish the Cambridge Press.

Printing houses

Early printing houses near the time of Gutenberg were run by “master printers.”

These printers owned shops, selected and edited manuscripts, determined the sizes of print runs, sold the works they produced, raised capital and organized distribution. Some other aspects of these printing houses were:

Print shop apprentices: Apprentices, usually between the ages of 15 and 20, worked for master printers. Apprentices were not required to be literate, and literacy rates at the time were very low, in comparison to today. Apprentices prepared ink, dampened sheets of paper, and assisted at the press.
Journeyman printers: After completing their apprenticeships, journeyman so called from the French “journée” for day printers were free to move employers. This facilitated the spread of printing to areas that were less print-centred.
Compositors: Those who set the type for printing.
Pressmen: the person who worked the press. This was physically labour Intensive.

The earliest-known image of a European, Gutenberg-style print shop is the

Dance of Death by Matthias Huss.

In Europe between 1500 and 1700 the role of the Master Printer was dying out and giving way to the bookseller – publisher. At the end of the eighteenth century there were several remarkable innovations in the graphic techniques and those that were utilized to make their materials.

Print comes to India

The printing press first came to Goa with Portuguese missionaries in the mid sixteenth century. By 1674, about 50 books had been printed in Konkani and in Kanara languages. Catholic priests printed the first Tamil book in 1579 at Cochin, and in 1713 the first Malayalam book was printed by them. By 1710, Dutch Protestant missionaries had printed 32 Tamil texts, many of them translations of older works.

The English language press did not grow in India till quite late even though the English East India Company began to import presses from the late seventeenth century.

TYPES OF PRINTING

‘I’m a printer’ can mean many different things, depending on a particular process:

1. Offset Lithography is the most common printing process today. It offsets ink from metal plates to a rubber blanket cylinder to the paper. Almost every commercial printer does offset printing.

2. Engraving produces the sharpest image of all. Image feels indented, running your fingers over the back side of the sheet. Most law firms still use engraving.

3. Thermography is raised printing, less expensive than engraving. Uses special powder that’s adhered to any colour ink. Mainly used for stationery products.

4. Reprographics, the general term is covering, copying and duplicating. Reprographics is the reproduction and duplication of visual materials such as documents, drawings, images, designs and the like through any process that makes use of light, optics or any photographic means. Reprographic equipment refers to laser printers, ion printers, electrostatic copiers and duplicators of all kinds, printing press, etc.

5. Digital Printing is the newest printing process and the least understood!

It includes all processes that use digital imaging to create printed pieces. It doesn’t use film. Currently it has limitations including colour, paper choices, and quality. But not for long — the technology is exploding!

6. Letterpress was the original process founded by Gutenberg in 1440. “Relief” printing like rubber stamps, images on the plate are higher than the surface.

7. Screen a.k.a. silk-screening: Ink is forced through a screen following a stencil pattern. Used for ring binders, t-shirts, bumper stickers, billboards.

To know more about Screen printing, you can check article below:

Screen Printing Article by Aarpee Décor

Bonus types of printing:

i. Flexography is a special type of printing for packaging products. The plates used are flexible. Products include cardboard boxes, grocery bags, gift-wrap, and can and bottle labels.

ii. Gravure prints directly from cylinder to paper. Used when printing for millions of impressions, like, magazines, newspapers, and direct mail catalogues.